Sardinia
Then, Bonaparte had the opportunity to participate in a military operation, the first military operation of his life – the conquest of Sardinia. Sardinia belonged to the Kingdom of Piedmont, ruled by the House of Savoy, and was a member of the First Coalition against France. Sardinia had no real strategic importance for France, but Paris needed a picture of victory in view of the defeats suffered by France at the beginning of the campaign against the First Coalition until the Battle of Valmy.
Admiral Laurent Trugeot is appointed commander of the operation, and the military force is to include units from the Aleppo Command, known as the Southern Army. France, from units of the French garrison stationed in Corsica, from six thousand volunteers who would come from Marseille and from the four Corsican National Guard battalions, subordinate to Pauli, and numbering about three thousand volunteers.
At the end of October 1792, Admiral Trugoet lands in Ajaccio and is greeted by an orchestra and cannon fire. He befriends the Bonaparte family and sets his sights on sixteen-year-old Maria Anna (Eliza), which will be the beginning of a long-term romantic relationship outside of their marriage, despite the large age gap between them.
Admiral Trugoet soon realizes that Pauli is “pulling his feet” from the operation and is willing to allocate only 1,700 soldiers to the operation, claiming that the tensions in Corsica do not allow him to allocate a larger force.
In mid-December 1792, the French soldiers land in Ajaccio. They immediately throw off all their burdens. They wander the streets of Ajaccio, drunk, and sing revolutionary songs: Ca Ira and Carmagnole. But the French soldiers are not content with singing in public.
They capture a resident who appears to them to be very elegantly dressed and suspiciously aristocratic and hang him from a street lamp in front of the townspeople, then tear his body into pieces and throw them into the sea. They break into the prison and pull out a Corsican suspected of attacking a French soldier, whose fate will be the same as the first.
One of the city's dignitaries, a member of the Peraldi family, tries to calm things down and he finds himself at a fast pace with a noose around his neck, and his life is miraculously saved at the very last moment when soldiers from the Corsican brigade arrive and cut the rope while he is already unconscious and gasping.
In mid-January 1793, four thousand volunteers arrive from Marseille instead of the promised six thousand, with only a thousand of them equipped with weapons. These are mostly negative types, and it seems that Marseille was happy to get rid of them in the hope that they will not return. They begin their journey of robbery and plunder already in Ajaccio.
They also break into the local prison in order to rescue one of their commanders who was imprisoned for improper behavior, and on the way they kill three soldiers of the National Guard. One of their commanders robs a jewelry store, kidnaps a girl and drags her with him to his ship in order to take her with him to Sardinia. Bonaparte himself is attacked by them and escapes by the skin of his teeth when a sergeant from the volunteer battalion stabs the Frenchman holding him with a dagger, and with the help of other volunteers from the National Guard he is rescued.
In light of these incidents, Admiral Trugeot realized that if he combined French and Corsican soldiers into one force, they would kill each other before they reached Sardinia. Thus, the idea was born to split the forces, with the Corsicans under the command of Colonna Cesari attacking and capturing the island of La Maddalena, located northeast of Sardinia, while the French under the command of General Rafael Comte de Cassabianca would sail around Sardinia from the west and attack its capital, Cagliari, located in the southern part of the island.
Bonaparte was integrated into the Corsican force as commander of a battery of cannons. On 18 February 1793, the Corsican force sailed from Bonifacio in the south of the island to the Maddalena island, but strong winds and a storm forced it to return the way it came.
A few days later, the force regroups for the voyage, but many of the Corsican soldiers refuse to board the ships. They claim that the French corvette, La Fauvette, equipped with twenty-four guns and intended to accompany the convoy, does not provide sufficient protection against the Sardinian warships, when it is well known that there are no Sardinian warships in the area.
After an effort, the rebels board ships and the force lands in freezing cold and incessant rain on the island of Maddalena. The Sardinian soldiers rain fire on the force from the top of the Santo Stefano fortress but quickly retreat. Bonaparte bombards the city, destroying about eighty houses and destroying the two Sardinian batteries.
Then everything goes wrong. The sailors of the ship La Fauvette decide to abandon the island. The news spreads like wildfire among the Corsican soldiers and a panicked and disorganized retreat to the landing point begins.
Bonaparte, who is in a small and remote gun battery, receives the news late and is faced with a dilemma: whether to abandon the guns and head for the landing point or to drag them with him and risk having himself and his crew abandoned in Sardinia.
He chooses the second option and drags the cannons with great effort and in pouring rain to the landing point, only to discover to his disappointment that there are not enough ships left to carry the cannons, and he abandons them after sabotaging them.
Now begins a blame game as to who was responsible for the failure of the operation. The French sailors mock the Corsican commander Colonna Cessari, calling him the Weeper (Pleurer) because he shed tears when he tried to convince them not to abandon the island.
Bonaparte does not wait in Bonifacio and arrives in Ajaccio, where he learns that the French have decided to disband the Corsican National Guard battalions and establish four regular battalions in their place, whose commanders will be appointed by the French and not elected by the Corsicans as had been the case until then.
Bonaparte and Pauli – The Rupture
Bonaparte will rush to Corte to consult with Pauli about the new situation. He will find Pauli full of hostility towards France and the latter will hint at his intention to withdraw from the union with her. Bonaparte reacts sharply and Pauli will leave the room in anger.
Pauli's decision stemmed from the fact that he was a scoundrel in the eyes of the French and the Paris Convention treated him with suspicion. Not only that, the Marseille Jacobin Club approached the Bastia Jacobin Club and asked them to monitor Pauli's conduct.
Three commissioners, with unlimited powers, including our acquaintance Cristoforo Saliseti, are sent from Paris to investigate what is happening in Corsica. Even before they send a report to Paris, the Convention decides on April 1793, XNUMX, to outlaw Pauli.
The commissars send an order to the municipality of Corte for the arrest of Pauli. The gendarmes who bring the order return and report that the crowd wants to hang them. In the following days, crowds of Corsicans will flock to Corte. They will uproot the tree of liberty and throw off their revolutionary bonnets. Similar scenes will take place all over Corsica.
The Bonaparte family understands that they must seek their future in France, because they know that in Corsica the Paulists will ultimately prevail and that they will be identified as enemies of Pauli, will be excommunicated and will lose everything they own.
A family gathering is held. Luciano writes:
I saw my mother as usual surrounded by my little brothers and sisters. Napoleon sat on the windowsill and looked restless. He wore the uniform of a commander in the National Guard. Our little sister, Caroline, sat at his head and played with his watch chain. Luigi sat in the corner of the room and painted dolls. Paulette and Jerome played with Eliza, the older sister…
Bonaparte remains the only one in his family who is still trying to heal the rift with Pauli. Luciano, a gifted but undisciplined rhetorician, acts differently. He is a staunch Jacobin and he is deeply hurt by not being accepted as Pauli's secretary.
In March 1793, he gave a speech at the Jacobin Club of Toulon, and he said that Pauli was a tyrant who wanted to take control of Corsica and used arbitrary and barbaric measures to do so. That month, March 1793, was the height of the Reign of Terror in France. The Paris Convention called Pauli to come to Paris. Pauli did not dream of doing so. He knew that the guillotine blade awaited him in Paris.
Luciano, satisfied with his speech in Toulon, which had gained resonance, sends a letter to Bonaparte and writes that he has dealt a death blow to their enemy. The letter is intercepted and reaches the hands of the enemy of the Bonaparte family, Pauli's assistant Pozzo di Borgo. This is the last straw that breaks the camel's back. Pauli, in a fit of rage, issues an order that means killing the Bonaparte brothers and confiscating the family's property. This is the wording of the order:
The Bonapartes, who were born in the swamp of despotism and rose to greatness under the patronage of the debauched Pasha (meaning Marvaff), are doomed to disgrace and worldly disgrace.
Bonaparte's failed attempt to take control of Ajaccio
Bonaparte, still unaware of the order, is in Ajaccio and receives an order from Saliseti to take control of the centers of power in Ajaccio. He tries to convince the commander of the National Guard in Ajaccio to open the gates of the citadel to his men.
In response, the commander orders Bonaparte's men to be disarmed. Bonaparte leaves Ajaccio to join the commissars in Bastia, but on his way he meets a man from Corte who tells him about the order issued against his family.
The terrified Bonaparte turns and rushes to Ajaccio to rescue his family, but he is pursued and must hide. At first he hides in the garden of his uncle Paravicini, but the place is not safe and he goes to hide in the house of his Jewish friend Jean Jerome Levie, the former mayor of Ajaccio, but the pursuers arrive there too and Bonaparte escapes from Ajaccio first by sea and then on horseback, arriving in Bastia.
Here he will convince the commissioners that Ajaccio must be taken over. In the city and its surroundings, he believes, he has many supporting witnesses. He proposes a plan. Units from the Swiss brigade stationed on the island will enter Ajaccio under the pretext that they are passing through it to another place, and at the same time soldiers from the French 42nd Brigade will land from the sea and take over the city.
On May 23, 1793, Bonaparte, two commissars, and about four hundred soldiers and gendarmes with several cannons left the Bay of Saint Fiorenzo in the north of the island aboard several ships, including the corvette La Belette and the two-masted brig L'Hassard.
It is said that Bonaparte preceded the force and landed in the Provenzale Bay north of Ajaccio, from where he sent a note to his mother:
Get ready, this country is no longer for us.
His mother leaves her home in a hurry, taking three of her children, Luigi, Anna Maria (Eliza), and Carlotta Maria (Pauline), and leaving the two youngest, Maria Annunziata (Caroline) and Gerolmo (Jerome) with their mother. Shortly afterwards, their house is looted and set on fire by Paoli's men.
On May 31, Bonaparte and Giuseppe, from their position on board the L'Hazzard, notice figures on the shore trying to attract their attention. They recognize their mother. They row a rowboat and bring them to the ship's deck, from where they are evacuated to the city of Calvi to the north.
On June 1793, XNUMX, the French force landed in the Bay of Ajaccio, also called the Sanguinaires because of its charming appearance at dusk. The force landed near the Genoese guard post called Le Capitello, announcing its arrival with shouts and cannon shots. But again, a fiasco. Only a handful of Swiss soldiers joined them and it turned out that the city's residents did not support them. The force remained for about a day near the Capitol and did not even try to reach the city, then it boarded the ships and returned the way it had come.
Frustrated by the series of failures, Bonaparte writes a scathing manifesto against Pauli, accusing his former idol of intending to gain power and betray France. “Pauli,” he writes, “appears to be a symbol of goodness and fairness, when in fact, he carries hatred and feelings of revenge in his heart.” The manifesto is accompanied by an action plan for the reconquest of Corsica.
To eat or to be eaten, that is the question
Now Bonaparte learns a third important lesson, not only in politics but in life in general.
“A man must choose a side,” he writes to Giuseppe. “A man must choose a side. It can be the side that destroys, loots, burns, but considering the alternative. It is better to eat than to be eaten…”
When I came across these words, I felt as if they had been slapped in the face. I, a member of the people who for generations had been accustomed to being eaten and not eating, and even took pride in it, was shocked and embarrassed. But then I came to my senses. I understood that these words came from the mouth of a twenty-three-year-old young man who was in a terrible trauma – he had lost his homeland. Then I calmed down when I remembered the words that Emperor Napoleon said in his twilight years, while in exile on the island of St. Helena:
"You must reserve the right to laugh tomorrow at what you believe today."
Bonaparte from consul to emperor
At the end of June 1793, the Bonaparte family found themselves destitute refugees in France. Four months later, Bonaparte distinguished himself by commanding the artillery formation in the capture of the city of Toulon and was promoted to the rank of general of brigade.
Two years later, General Bonaparte would defend the Directory in Paris and be promoted to the rank of General of Division, the highest rank. He would lead the army that would conquer all of northern Italy. He would lead an army to conquer Egypt, and in August 1799 he would return from Egypt and on October 1, 1799 his ship La Muiron would dock in the port of Ajaccio.
Bonaparte would not want to see anyone but one woman. A woman named Camilla Ilari. The same Camilla who, fourteen years earlier, had stood on that same pier awaiting the arrival of seventeen-year-old Second Lieutenant Nabolio returning from France.
Two months later, Bonaparte would seize power in France, and he would become consul – first consul – consul for life – emperor – an emperor who would rule a vast empire – an empire that would encompass most of Europe, including the island of Corsica – but his foot would never set foot on this island again.
Napoleon does not forget
But! But Bonaparte will not forget the people who did him good in the first chapter of his life. In his will, which he wrote in April 1821, in St. Helen, three weeks before his death, he commanded:
100,000 francs to the descendants of Jean Jerome Levy, his Jewish friend, former mayor of Ajaccio, who they hid in his house.
100,000 francs to the descendants of Baron Jean-Pierre du Tay, who was executed in 1794 by firing squad a few months after Bonaparte fled Corsica because he was considered an aristocrat by the revolutionaries.
He also instructs the executors of his will to take care of his wet nurse, Camilla Ilary, and her family, so that they will not know want for the rest of their lives.
And to me? And to me he bequeathed this story.